1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to semiconductor manufacturing equipment and more particularly to the application of a thermoelectric device to a semiconductor processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Semiconductor manufacturing equipment is used to process semiconductor wafers into electronic devices. Typically, to conduct a thermal process, the wafers are loaded into the processing system using a wafer carrier. Generally, a transfer mechanism individually removes the wafers from the carrier and transfers the individual wafers through valves, and into various processing chambers. The transfer mechanism may also move individual wafers between processing chambers to effect different processing steps. During many processing steps the wafers are heated. Thus, one final processing step may include a wafer-cooling step. To effect the wafer-cooling step, the wafers are placed into a cooling chamber until the temperature of the wafers is low enough so that the wafer can be replaced into the carrier.
In most processing systems the process steps and thus, the processing chambers have different requirements for heating and/or cooling of various components or structures, including the wafers. Because of the variable requirements, process chambers are continuously heated up and/or cooled down during a processing cycle, which can result in a substantial amount of energy being wasted.